Wagner Group 'nearly seized Putin's nukes - but were foiled by a closed door'

13 July 2023 , 09:19

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While en route to Moscow, some Wagner fighters rerouted to a nuclear storage site (Image: AFP via Getty Images)

The band of war-hardened Wagner Group mutineers who plotted to overthrow the Kremlin allegedly planned to capture one of Vladimir Putin's city-destroying nukes.

Ukrainian spymaster Major General Kyrylo Budanov has claimed that while marching on Moscow, Yevgeny Prigozhin's boys took a swift detour east towards the Voronezh-45 nuclear base. When they were around 60 miles from the facility, Russia was unable to track them on surveillance.

Maj Gen Budanov - who heads up Ukraine's military intelligence - said the group planned to steal nuclear devices that could be transported on the body of a soldier and were developed during the Soviet era. He said the mercenaries were planning a kamikaze-style attack in which they would "raise the stakes" after fighting to the death.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner chief (TELEGRAM/ @concordgroup_official)

“Because if you are prepared to fight until the last man standing, this is one of the facilities that significantly raises the stakes,” Budanov said, according to the Kyiv Post.

The devices were developed during the Cold War and were contained inside a backpack, meaning they could easily be wielded by a large number of Wagner's 25,000 mutineers. The site south of Moscow was "one of the key storage facilities for these backpacks", explained Major Budanov.

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Prigozhin said he didn't want to overthrow Putin, just his defence ministers (Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

The spy chief explained that the vicious killers were stopped in their tracks by the site's closed doors. He added: "The doors of the storage were closed and they didn’t get into the technical section."

The US couldn't corroborate Budanov's claims, saying that they were unaware of any risk to the seizure of nuclear weapons, but a Kremlin source said the gtroup "managed to get into a zone of special interest".

It was at this point "the Americans got agitated" because it was used to store nuclear munitions.

Ryan Fahey